Van Morrison: your views please

they used to play "best of van morrison" in the health food store EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY, till i was sure i would never ever voluntarily listen to the guy again

cosign. it took me about a decade to recover

Put on Common One and then Miles' In a Silent Way. They flow perfectly. If picking up on CD, be sure to to wait for the remastered versions. They aren't coming with an excess of bonus material but a couple tracks and the sound is improved. And they're coming out in no logical order -- starting with His Band and Street Choir up through the past few years. (Van doesn't own Astral Weeks or Moondance outright so they're not part of this...) I don't think St. Dom's is out remastered yet. And to add to the confusion, some are out in the UK, I'm told.

Morrison treated his band and crew horribly. In the midst of "Fair Play," one of a handful of non-"Astral" tunes in the set, he decided he didn't like the tempo and screamed at his drummer to switch from brushes to sticks. Morrison was close enough to the microphone that the crowd couldn't avoid taking in the humiliation. He later summoned a roadie to the center of the stage to move his microphone and music stands a few feet away from him, then screamed an obscenity at him while telling him to leave the stage. Then Morrison launched into "In the Garden," a 1986 spiritual glorious enough to get him right with God, flaws and all.

From Dave McKenna's Washington Post review of Morrison on his current Astral Weeks tour

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703207.html

Ha! My friend got a refund from a show on the Astral Weeks tour because he didn't play any songs from Astral Weeks!

I'm surprised not to see more love for "Moondance" (the album) on here. That strikes me as a solid piece of work - but maybe I'm a sucker for pop-R&B with horn arrangements.

oh yeah "Moondance" can't be denied! Might just be too obvious ... but I love that record. So many good songs, wonderful vibe. Some of it is overplayed, but whenever I put it on, I love it.

Yeah, I guess it's always unfashionable to like something that's universally popular - better to pick out the obscure release only known to hardcore fans. But screw that, I say. Good music is good music.

speaking of obscure, if you only own one Van bootleg, here's the one: http://moonglampers.net/blog/2009/02/10/van-morrison-ksan-1971/ Don't know if the link still works, but seek it out elsewhere, if not!

it is sooooo good. "Friday's Child", "Just Like A Woman" ... Can't believe it hasn't been officially released. I vastly prefer it to "It's Too Late ..." (which is good, but not this good)

man this is good...though don't talk down about my baby!!! (being it's too late to stop now)

"Then Morrison launched into "In the Garden," a 1986 spiritual glorious enough to get him right with God, flaws and all."

such a great song. i said this somewhere else last week, but no guru no method no teacher is up there with any of my fave 60's or 70's van records. i love the whole thing from front to back. so beautiful.

don't talk down about my baby!!!
no, I don't mean to diss It's Too Late -- that is one of the best live records of the 70s, no doubt. But that bootleg is kinda unbelievable. Wait til you get to the Dylan cover!

listening now this is really great.....

sounds different though from It's Too Late, band doesn't seem as big in terms of number of players maybe...

I need No Guru No Method No Teacher and Common One

Is Hard Nose to the Highway good?

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/v/van-morrison/album-hard-nose-the-highway.jpg
it's got a terrible cover, but otherwise, yeah, it's good!

last song "Purple Heather" is A+ Van

"Bein' Green" is kinda C- Van though. Good for the lolz though.

kermit cover?

yeah, basically. missed opportunity that van never appeared on the muppet show really.

I'm loving that cover, it reminds me of my other favourite cover:
http://www.torrentportal.com/uploads/images/1153170zucchero%20-%20miserere%20a.jpg

Yeah, I guess it's always unfashionable to like something that's universally popular - better to pick out the obscure release only known to hardcore fans.

If you repeat this often and loud enough, you might transform the second side of Moondance into the near-genius of the first.

the flipside of HNTH is even wacker
http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/0/6/6/7/3/9/webimg/224999037_tp.jpg
i remember thinking as a kid it made Van look like an X-Man.

He's Banshee!

Yeah, I guess it's always unfashionable to like something that's universally popular - better to pick out the obscure release only known to hardcore fans.

If you repeat this often and loud enough, you might transform the second side of Moondance into the near-genius of the first.

― Anatomy of a Morbius (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 11, 2009 9:14 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Perma

i love moondance but yeah alfred's point is pretty well taken...actually man...that first side is as good as any a-side to an LP ever....

i like the 2nd half though, but it's more just good solid pleasant Van...the 2nd half reminds me a lot of "his band and street choir"

http://comicbookbeginners.info/files/xmencostumes/giant-size/banshee-bigcostume1.jpg
you might be onto something there ... Banshee was Irish, right?

^^^i think that costume might be similar to what Van wore to the Last Waltz anyway.

http://i.cnn.net/v5cache/TCM/Images/Dynamic/i28/LastWaltz_FF_300x225_102220041519.gif

vs.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/0/0c/Banshee_001.gif

If you repeat this often and loud enough, you might transform the second side of Moondance into the near-genius of the first

First side is genius. Second side is near-genius.

THEM and only THEM. Sorry, garage rock purist here.

heh, fair enough. it is interesting that Van never really returned to that garage rock sound, after having helped invent quite a fair bit of it.

acid is a two edged sword

but speaking of THEM, the version of "Friday's Child" on that bootleg I posted up above is sweeeeeeet.

man this is really swinging man....it's far out!

for THEM completists: be sure to add "Might Like a Rose" from Backtrackin', the only cut I can see that didn't make it onto that 2CD comp of complete Them recordings....any others?

This thread inspired me to listen to Tupelo Honey (the album) today. Lots of good stuff on there.

...listening to the 1971 boot, many thanks tylerw. Spectacular. Friday's Child / Hound Dog / Ballerina is a fantastic sequence.

Nothing else on HNTH quite lives up to "Snow in San Anselmo" but it's still good.

yeah thanks for pointing this boot out. very good

my pleasure -- anyone who's into Van should hear it, I think. His vocals are stunning -- he's just floating above the band.

Holy shit the "Just Like a Woman" on that boot..

Yeah, this boot is great! And it inspired me to listen through a whole bunch of Van's work, thus confirming that I really don't care for Hard Nose The Highway and need to spend a lot of time with Veedon Fleece because it is great.

"you don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river"
always wished there was more astral weekly stuff like this later on

You Don't Pull No Punches is the dope, more Astral than Astral. His voice does incredible, unexpected things. Every single Van song since is an anticlimax as far as his tenor is concerned. "Get down to the real soul!"

suggest astral weekly as title for that zine scott steward's been talking about

I heard You Don't Pull No Punches on the radio a few days ago in the middle of the afternoon, on the Current, which usually plays nothing but the hottest indie singles of the moment.

Veedon Fleece's rep is definitely on the rise lately.

My favorite has always been Saint Dominic's Preview, the best merger of his Domino-style hits and Astral Weeks-ish long pieces.

Check this out clip from 1974 before the Van police pull it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpPSBzGEklE

th new album sounds pretty great to these ears. jazzy, relaxing, flowing nicely, his voice is still tops. and i never realy got into astral weeks...

looking forward to it on Tuesday - I think later Van is pretty badly underpraised. Pay the Devil is pretty great, The Waiting Game has some stone classics on it ("Rough God Goes Riding" especially to my ears)

his new albums have sold modestly but consistently well for twenty years and they each sport at least one gem

yeah i don't keep up w/ the new stuff too much, but i'm always pleasantly surprised when i hear one of them. he can still sing.